Stars Go Blue
by Hedgi
Summary: Just because the timeline's been reset doesn't mean no one remembers. Cisco sees the events of the first timeline, and will never forget them. Set during the 2.08/4.08 crossover episodes, spoilers for those. All aboard the pain train.


Because that Crossover was cruel and you know this had to have happened off screen. Also because someone prompted it. All aboard the pain train.

* * *

Stars Go Blue

Oliver grabs his arm and tells him he's not sure the gauntlets will work. Cisco would be upset about the insult to his tech, but he can't be. Because suddenly all he can see is a warehouse, and Oliver was right, because the Staff is in Barry's hands and Oliver's, pulsing blue, and he can see it killing them.  
The vibes always have control, aside from the one time he lucid dreamed his own death, and they let him go when they want, Magic do as You Will, like from _The Last Unicorn_ , and he's Schmendrick, the wizard-fool. And he tries, to move his feet, to blink, to breathe, anything to stop the flickering lights.

It's not until Oliver is dead, until Oliver has been _vaporized,_ falling to the ground even as he bursts into red-white-gold that Cisco can see through the blue.  
He staggers as he comes back to himself, keenly aware that whatever he saw, it hasn't happened yet. It can't happen. Not to this Oliver, not to his friend. But he's only ever seen things on this earth or Earth-2, and Harry told him that on his Earth, Oliver died years ago, and his Father bore the Hood and Bow.  
He looks up, but Oliver's gone.  
Cisco goes back to the gauntlets. They have to work.

~~  
Carter brushes against him as he takes his leave, oh so graciously bugging off so that Cisco can try to do for Kendra what Iris does for Barry. Bring her back to herself, not the self she feels she has to be. The brush of hand against arm is enough, is too much, because the wide field, the Farmhouse Ala Age of Ultron is replaced by a dark warehouse, too big, too empty. Carter is there, looking the the man from his first Vibe, and Cisco realizes they were two visions, not a man who was really a woman who was Kendra, but two halves of the same coin. Bronze mask, like an eagle, or a falcon, or a hawk, fierce, but not enough to hide the paleness in his skin, his open mouth gasp on the floor, dying.

The Vibe won't release him. Through a blue lit lens he watches a breath of something shimmery leave Carter's mouth, like a visible soul. Once, knowing that Souls really did exist would have made him happy, or at least grateful. Now all he can think, as the sensation of concrete under his feet releases back to warm grass, is that maybe it would be better if there wasn't anything after death. Carter has died 207 times, counting the Vibe that can't come true, with no hope of rest.  
He tries his best to sooth Kendra's fears of not being enough. Because if anything can change the future, it's believing you can. Or maybe it's believing you can't, but trying anyway. And whatever he saw, that's not the past, not yet. Changing the past, that you can't do without opening up friggin' singularities in the sky. But altering the future? They do that every day.  
Cisco hates time travel.

~~  
Cisco squeezes Kendra's hand as she leaves, and hopes this goodbye isn't the last they'll have.  
The blue takes him, and he can't fight it, so he watches, numb, heart in his throat, as her wings fail her. He was right. It's not Warrior rage that unfurls her wingspan, it's not hate, or anger, or desire to End.  
He sees her calling desperately on that rage, ignoring the power that lies somewhere deeper, calling on the surface falsehood.  
It fails her. In the Vibe, the vision, the nightmare that doesn't end and will never end, he sees her fall, no wings to catch her, nothing to break the fall. He wasn't there. There was nothing he could have done.  
He knows what happens next, without turning because all the vibe shows him in a moment that lasts lifetimes is the mask askew, her eyes dark.  
She died afraid, and knowing it would happen again, and again, and again.  
Somehow that seems the worst of it.  
The Vibe fades, monochrome to full color, before Savage kills anyone else.

~~  
Everyone is gone, but him and Felicity, Caitlin busy with something in the kitchen, the others are gone to this grand Last Stand for the Fate of Literally Everyone. They're on Coms, praying in two silent languages in two cultures and two religions to the same Father for miracles, because if every they've needed help from any higher power out there, now seems about the time. No amount of reincarnation and immortal magic is going to wrest that faith born in desperation away.

Everyone is in place, and Felicity reaches out one hand to Cisco, to hold for a moment of comfort. He takes it without thinking, and doesn't have the time to curse as the world shifts, and he almost thinks that nothing went wrong, that the vibe isn't a vibe, just a momentary lapse, because he's standing in the same living room. But Laurel is here, and Dig, and Thea, and they—they went to the warehouse, didn't they? The room is blue and suddenly he sees from the window that it's not just the vibe. A wave of blue fire overtakes everything. It hits Caitlin. It takes Dig and Thea, it takes Felicity, the same blue that tore Oliver apart, taking them apart, the blue washing over them, crackling like a living thing, the way he imagined the pulse from the Particle accelerator swept over the city before.  
But this is different.  
There isn't time even to scream. There isn't time to reach for Laurel beside him, there isn't even time for prayer.  
He thinks he might have seen a streak of gold light in the blue. He can only hope Barry made it.

It burns, blazing, like Eobard shredding his heart in a blaze of white-dark pain, but in every bone, every muscle, every nerve, and then it's over.  
Done.

Felicity releases his hand, concern for him swallowed up by sudden activity over the coms.  
All is not lost, not yet. Cisco breathes again.

Just like the first time he died, the timeline's been reset. It never happened. Barry is the only one who remembers otherwise, who saw otherwise with his own haunted eyes.  
Cisco remembers it every night.  
They do not speak of it to anyone else.  
Some burdens are too big to share.

* * *

Please feed your writer and leave a comment :D. I'll just se myself down to the Smores party in Hell.


End file.
